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A STORY OF 

A NEW ENGLAND TOWN 

ADDRESS BY HENRY H. SPRAGUE 

GIVEN AT 

ATHOL 

OLD HOME WEEK 

July 26, 1903 



^ 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1904 






THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

Address Page i 

Appendix "41 

Publications relative to the History 

OF Athol "49 

Plot of Town, 1734 Facing page 42 



A STORY OF 
A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 



♦* There is no place like Home." 

We gather at our old home to-day to lay down 
before her our tributes of affection and of gratitude. 

Whether our eyes have lingered upon these 
scenes from day to day so that every object has long 
seemed to be indelibly printed and fixed, or our 
vision, after long absence, has been possibly blurred 
and confused by the tender memories of other years, 
let us all look again with the quickened sight which 
this day must inspire, and seek to realize the beauty 
of the birthright which was appointed by Nature to 
be ours. 

It is no wonder that the native Indians lingered 
longest in these secluded valleys, planting these 
fertile meadows, fishing in the winding, eddying 
brooks and rivers, and hunting in the surrounding 
forests which abounded with game, and finally 
yielded up their native rights with sadness and 
reluctance, mingled with menace and resistance. 

It was natural, too, that the first settlers of the 
town should seek these encircling hills upon which 
to build their homes, and thus to gain not only 



2 A STORY OF 

greater security from surrounding perils, but that 
higher power which Nature gives to those who seek 
to look most widely upon her work. 

The valleys and the hills are still within our sight 
to-day. The river/ changed little except in name, 
runs in the same course through the town, some- 
times rushing with its noisy chatter, sometimes 
lingering in graceful stretches of repose, and some- 
times arrested summarily in its course to help do 
its work in the busy round of civilization. Mill 
Brook, also called to do its share of labor for human 
needs, still finds its chance to tear away from all 
restraint, and leaps madly from rock to rock in deep 
defiles to join its waters with the larger stream, 
while Tully Brook, with greater patience and inde- 
pendence, lingers more longingly at the foot of its 
sister hills before it comes to the embrace of the 
main river. 

Ward Hill still gazes down from its proud emi- 
nence and proclaims dominion; the "Street," from 
its long-extended ridge, looking on either side, 
claims its natal beauty, and, more boldly than ever, 
stripped of its thickets, High Knob asserts its far- 
reaching realm; Chestnut Hill lifts from point to 
point its noble elms, emblems of grace and age ; the 
Tullys, big and little, though shorn of their prime- 
val crowns, bear undaunted their regal crests; and 
the old West Hill, its faithful sentinel ^ ever on guard, 

^ Miller's River, formerly called Pequoig River. 
» The " Sentinel Elm." 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 3 

responds to them all, with its never-failing " All 's 
well." The fertile slopes and meadows still smile 
securely and richly between them, though their 
products are of the white man's and not of the 
Indians' planting. 

It was a fair possession — you will hardly find a 
fairer one — which the red sons of the forest yielded 
to our fathers more than a century and a half ago, 
in order that they, and their children, and their chil- 
dren's children, might enter and improve them for 
loftier purposes and for higher uses. Look at it as 
we may to-day, with eyes familiarized by constant 
gazing, or dazzled or made critical by any splen- 
dors which the world may afford, it is a noble 
heritage which our fathers bequeathed. 

What is the record of the purposes fulfilled, of 
the uses made of the lands which our ancestors 
seized ; and have their successors done their part to 
justify those acts of seizure .'' 

For more than one hundred years after the begin- 
ning of the Commonwealth, this region was allowed 
to remain an unbroken wilderness, and it was as 
late as the year 1732 that the General Court took 
the first steps to lay out the township on Miller's 
River, six miles square, and gave it its Indian name 
of Paquoiag^ and allotted its lands for settlement.^ 
How familiar to-day the names of those admitted to 

1 The name appears in the old records in many different spellings. 
' See Appendix, p. 41. 



A STORY OF 



the goodly company of original proprietors, — Field, 
Oliver and Lee, Morton and Jones and Lord and 
Kendall, Fay and Smith, Goddard, Bancroft Wheeler 
and Twichell, and others whose names still lino-er 
upon our tongues. 

In September in the year 1735, ^ve of these ad- 
mitted proprietors, accompanied by their families, 
with their household goods upon their shoulders, 
journeyed through the woods from the Connecticut 
River and established here their abodes.^ Here 
they built the first homes one hundred and sixty- 
eight years ago; and, separated from civilization 
and neighbors by many miles of pathless woods, 
surrounded by hostile Indians and beasts of prey, 
with only the most primitive means of subsistence, 
they sought to found a town. 

The first settlers had their trials and discourage- 
ments: there were lurking dangers by day as they 
cleared their fields and planted their crops with 
their muskets by their sides; they were driven at 
night to their rude garrisons for common shelter 
and defence and to watch against attack from fire 
and tomahawk ; they were exposed to suffering from 
sickness and disease, from scantiness of food and 
clothing, but they neither flinched nor failed before 
the task. They were men and women of resolute 
spirit and indomitable courage, of patient industry 
and sturdy enterprise. Whatever their failings, to 
which history is silent, they were a worthy stock to 
* See Appendix, p. 43. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 5 

whom their descendants may look back with grati- 
tude and pride. 

On the sixth day of March in the year 1762, the 
proprietors of the plantation of " Payquage " were 
invested by the General Court of the Province of 
Massachusetts Bay with the rights and privileges of 
a town under the name of Athol/ a name given 
it, it seems, by its largest and most distinguished 
landowner, from his ancestral home among the 
picturesque hills and glens of the bold Scottish 
Highlanders.^ 

Its existence as a struggling, outlying settlement 
ended, and its corporate life with the rights and re- 
sponsibiHties of a New England town began. 

The martial spirit had begun with the founding 
of the settlement. The first settlers had marched 
with guns in hand into the plantation, and in all 
the earlier years the musket had been as neces- 
sary for their welfare as the implements of peaceful 
labor. The defence of their lives and their homes 
had required the cultivation of warlike habits and 
measures. 

Several of the inhabitants had already enlisted 
in the provincial service for the French and Indian 
war, and some had laid down their lives at Crown 
Point, and in the expeditions against Canada for 
the protection of the Colonies and the empire 

* See Appendix, p. 43. 

* Col. John Murray, see Appendix, p. 44. 



6 A STORY OF 

against foreign attack.^ When the Crown called 
for their assistance they had been ready to re- 
spond to its summons. 

But now a different struggle was approaching. 
The rights of the people were in danger from 
the encroachments of the Crown itself. 

The towns of New England were virtually clus- 
ters of independent powers, acknowledging the 
sovereign in matters of national defence and pro- 
tection, and willing, if need be, to contribute volun- 
tarily their money and their lives to the great 
empire, not to which they belonged, but of which 
they felt themselves to be a proud part. They 
were yet jealous to the last degree, as free-born 
Englishmen, of their right to local self-government. 
By their own unaided efforts, through hardships 
and sufferings, they had sought to build their 
homes, they had sought and struggled for indi- 
vidual freedom, and they had gained it here on 
the sea-coasts and in the forests. 

The same General Court which had given the 
town its name had listened to the stirring words of 
James Otis and applauded his vindication of the 
rights of the colonists, and the town with its 
earliest breath had drawn in the inspiration of 
independence. 

Within eight years after its birth, the first blood 
of the colonists in the struggle for their rights was 
shed, and the inhabitants responded to the reports 

^ Rev. Mr. Clarke's Centennial Discourse, p. 74. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 7 

of the Boston Massacre on the fifteenth day of May, 
1770, by voting six pounds "to provide a stock of 
amonition for the town." 

Four years later when news of the Boston Port 
Bill came, the men of Athol gathered, on July 7, 
1774, in full town meeting, and it was "unani- 
mously agreed to enter into a league or covenant " 
to renounce the use and consumption of all goods 
arrivine in America from Great Britain until the 
Act should be repealed and the people restored to 
the free use and enjoyment of their natural or char- 
ter rights, or until, as was significantly added, other 
measures should be adopted by the body of the 
people or the General Congress of the colonies, 
which was soon to assemble, more likely to afford 
its deliverance. It was voted that the league be 
deposited with the town clerk to be kept with the 
town records. A committee to correspond with 
other towns of the Province was also chosen, con- 
sisting of Deacon Aaron Smith, William Bigelow, 
Josiah Goddard, Capt. John Haven, Ephraim Stock- 
well, James Oliver, Abner Graves, James Stratton, 
Jr., and Daniel Lamson. 

In the following month, on the twenty-fifth day of 
August, in the year 1774, the month preceding the 
passage of the famous Suffolk County resolutions, 
which were presented to the First Continental Con- 
gress on its assembling and indorsed by that body, 
the men of Athol were again called together " to con- 
sider and determine on what measures are proper 



8 A STORY OF 

for this town upon the present exigencies of our 
public affairs, more especially relative to the late 
edict of the British Parliament for the blocking up 
of the port or harbour of Boston " ; and again they 
gathered in town meeting and they unanimously 
passed their declaration of rights. 

The resolutions which they adopted were long 
and comprehensive. They declared it the duty of 
every inhabitant of the colonies and of the dis- 
tressed province to unite in one firm bond of union; 
that, acknowledging themselves loyal and dutiful 
subjects of King George the Third, they stood ready 
to maintain and defend his crown and dignity so 
long as he should rule and govern agreeably to the 
English Constitution and their own chartered rights; 
but that the late bills of Parliament by which their 
charter rights were taken away, and the free consti- 
tution of the government thereby annihilated and 
destroyed, were a violation of the sacred compact 
between Great Britain and the Province, to be re- 
jected with abhorrence. 

They " Resolved," as the vote ran, " that we 
stand ready to join our feeble efforts in conjunc- 
tion with the rest of our brethren in these colonies 
or of this Province, to prevent the above mentioned 
Acts from taking effect, and also to assist to the 
utmost in our power in the most prudent and likely 
measures that may be adopted, to recover our lost 
liberties and privileges " ; and they added as a prac- 
tical suggestion, that " if it be not too much boldness 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 9 

and presumption for so small a town to mention 
any particular plan, we are humbly of opinion that 
it would have a happy tendency to work our deliv- 
erance, if the Province should reassume the first 
charter that was given them, and at the same time 
let the mother country know that we not only re- 
main willing, but even desirous to continue loyal 
and dutiful subjects to King George consistent 
with the liberties and privileges granted in said 
charter." They finally declared that any person 
accepting a commission or post of office under the 
New Establishment should be treated as an enemy 
to his country, as he was lending a helping hand to 
those who were endeavoring to enslave them.^ 

I have spoken of these resolutions at length, but 
I wish that I might recite them in full. I know no 
bolder or stronger statement of the rights of the 
colonies made by any municipal body at so early 
a date, and none more complete and practical and 
far-reaching. If they did not assert independence, 
they breathed the spirit of the immortal declaration 
proclaimed nearly two years later, on the fourth day 
of July, 1776.^ 

Yet it had been a period of less than two score 
years since these men had first gathered here to 
conquer a wilderness, and hardly more than a dozen 
years since they had been incorporated as a town. 

Their patriotism did not, however, in their re- 

1 See, for full text of resolutions, Appendix, p. 44. 
^ See Appendix, p. 46. 



lO A STORY OF 

moteness, find expression simply in resolutions. In 
the month following their adoption the town chose 
William Bigelow, a delegate to the Provincial Con- 
gress at Concord and at Cambridge, and voted to 
enlist thirty men, exclusive of ofHcers, "to send in 
case of alarm," and to have two companies of mili- 
tia in town. On January ii, 1775, they appointed 
John Haven, James Stratton, Jr., William Bigelow, 
Deacon Aaron Smith, Hiram Newhall, Josiah God- 
dard and James Oliver, a Committee of Inspection, 
" to see that the Resolves of the Continental and 
Provincial Congresses are faithfully observed." 

They organized and trained their company of 
minute men ; and when news came of the march 
of the British upon Lexington and Concord, these 
men, twenty-seven in number, under the com- 
mand of Captain Ichabod Dexter and Lieutenants 
Ephraim Stockwell and Abner Graves, mustered at 
the call, and, before the nineteenth of April was over, 
they had started on a seventy-mile march to Cam- 
bridge to the aid of their brethren in arms. Thir- 
teen days' actual service credited to the company 
shows that they formed a part of that wonderful 
up-gathering around Boston of thousands of men 
who, when the first shot was heard, rallied at the 
minute's summons in defence of American liberty. 

Thenceforward the men of Athol did their part 
in the struggle for independence. They marched 
under Captain Stockwell to Bennington ; they were 
chronicled at Dorchester Heights, and at Ticonde- 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. II 

roga, at Tarrytown, in the Jerseys, at White Plains 
and at Saratoga, The names of one hundred and 
fifty-six Athol men are found upon the muster and 
pay rolls of the Continental Army. And as the 
population at this time probably but little, if any, 
exceeded eight hundred men, women and children, 
all told, it seems that one out of every five or six of 
the total population — or substantially every able- 
bodied man — did military service at some period 
during the Revolutionary War. 

They fought in support of the principles of inde- 
pendence which the inhabitants had at the outset 
in town meeting proclaimed. They likewise as- 
sessed themselves liberally in money for the charges 
of the war. They met heavy requisitions made 
upon the town for money and supplies. They 
equipped and maintained the soldiers of the town 
in the field, and they supported the families left 
at home. Their efforts and their sacrifices seem 
almost beyond their strength and their means. 

The spirit of independence did not henceforward 
languish. As questions concerning the government 
arose, the inhabitants, assembled in town meetino- 
were quick to express their opinions in favor or in 
opposition. They asked that a declaration of rights 
be inserted in the first plan of a State Constitution 
submitted to the towns, and they chose a committee 
to suggest amendments to the scheme. In the year 
1787, they expressed their satisfaction with the form 



12 A STORY OF 

of the National Constitution when submitted to 
the State for adoption, though their sister towns 
in the County arrayed themselves unanimously in 
opposition. 

In successive town meetings, the inhabitants 
vigorously protested against the measures adopted 
by the national government preceding and attend- 
ant upon the war of 1S12. They were again oppos- 
ing evils which more especially affected the towns 
upon the sea-coast. 

On August 31, 1808, they adopted a petition to 
the President of the United States, in which they 
" beg leave, respectfully and unanimously, to repre- 
sent that although the evils resulting from the em- 
bargo laws may not be so immediately and sensibly 
felt by individual towns as by our seaports, and 
although the farmer may not, at present, so much 
as the merchant, feel their deleterious effects, yet 
they are considered of sufhcient magnitude to cre- 
ate a general alarm and distress in the interior part 
of the country, and that the ruin of the husband- 
man wall soon follow that of the merchant, unless 
said evils can be speedily removed," and they 
prayed "... that the said laws may be suspended 
as soon as consistent with the nature and fitness 
of things." 

In accordance with the report of a committee, 
of which James Oliver was chairman, and Joseph 
Pierce, James Humphreys, William Young, and 
Joseph Proctor were members, they resolved, on 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 3 

February 15, 1809, with the ardor which existed 
of old, " That whereas civil liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness are considered by us as inalienable 
rights, and no less essential to the good and well- 
being of Political Society than public authority, 
We will never surrender these rights but with the 
surrender of our lives, and as the late measures of 
our national administration are in our opinion, par- 
tial, unjust, inexpedient and unconstitutional, the 
opinion of any earthly judge to the contrary not- 
withstanding; therefore Resolved that we are not 
bound to support, and we will not support such 
measures"; and the State Legislature was earnestly 
requested " not to quit their posts until they shall 
have asserted the sovereignty and independence of 
this State and secured to its citizens their wonted 
privileges." These resolutions seem to have been 
adopted against the protests of some of the voters. 

The town thus expressed with its former bold- 
ness, at the outset of the controversy which cul- 
minated in the war of 181 2, its sympathy with the 
sufferings experienced by its sister towns upon 
the coast and its opposition to the measures of 
the national government. 

Again, on January 31, 18 14, after the conflict had 
been raging for two years, the inhabitants in town 
meeting, in accordance with the report of a com- 
mittee of which Joseph Proctor, James Oliver, Dr. 
Chaplin, and Samuel Sweetser were members, can- 
didly submitting as to the " disgraceful war carried 



14 A STORY OF 



on ostensibly for the defence of sailor rights and 
free trade," "whether soldiers have now any rights 
to lose or trade any freedom to expect," denounced 
the assumption of authority by Congress as a " dar- 
ing attempt at Usurpation and Despotism," and 
called upon the honorable members of the General 
Court of the Commonwealth " to use every consti- 
tutional means to induce an honorable peace, and 
to repel every encroachment upon the state sover- 
eignties, and while we would be rivalled by none in 
cheerful submission to all constitutional requisitions 
of the General Government for the interest and 
happiness of these United States, we stand ready 
at the call of our State government to resist all en- 
croachments and usurpations to the last extremity, 
and as in duty bound will ever pray." 

We may still better appreciate the intensity of 
the feeling in the town in opposition to the meas- 
ures adopted by the national administration in this 
controversy, as well as the strong sentiment in sym- 
pathy with the suffering of its sister towns, when 
we recall that the Rev. Mr. Estabrook, the apostle 
of peace and good-will, availing himself of a Fast 
Day service, in his prayer invoked the choicest 
blessings, each by name, upon the Governor and 
all the other State officials, and then, after a mo- 
ment's pause, continued, "O Lord, thou hast 
commanded us to pray also for our enemies; we 
therefore beseech thee to bless the President of 
these United States and the two houses in Cono-ress 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. , 1 5 

assembled," and, specifying their particular trans- 
gressions, besought that they might see the error 
of their ways and abandon their evil courses.* 

The resolutions of the town were a startling as- 
sertion of State rights and independence of national 
control, from which the town in later years fully 
receded, and it abundantly testified, by its acts as 
well as its words, its belief that the Union of the 
States was one and inseparable. 

When the life of the Nation was threatened by its 
own misguided sons, and the call for assistance came 
from the President, the inhabitants of Athol gave 
response as quick and as forcible as of old, when 
their individual liberties were assailed. On the 
twentieth of April, in 1861, when the news came 
that their brethren, who had rallied to the defence 
of the capitol, had been shot down in the streets of 
Baltimore, — that the struggle had actually begun, 
and the first blood had been shed, — the people 
again gathered in public meeting, and with enthusi- 
astic unanimity pledged themselves to the support 
of the national government. Men, far exceeding in 
number the due proportion applicable to the town 
under the President's call, straightway enlisted in 
the service. 

To every succeeding call, a like answer was given. 
It would seem that the enlistments of men in every 

* George W. Horr, in History of Worcester County (1879), ^°^" ^» 
p. 225. 



1 6 A STORY OF 

case exceeded the number required as the quota 
of the town, and when the war was over a surplus 
of twenty-eight men were to her credit. Athol fur- 
nished during the four years of the war three hun- 
dred and eighty-seven men and fifteen commissioned 
officers, a creditable record made by a population 
of twenty-six hundred. Men of Athol bore their 
part in all the great campaigns in the East; they 
marched through the Shenandoah, and fought at 
Cedar Mountain and Antietam, at Chancellorsville 
and Gettysburg, they battled with Burnside at New- 
burn and Roanoke Island ; they accompanied Grant 
in the desperate contests through the Wilderness; 
they struggled through the swamps of Louisiana, 
and shared in the victories of Port Hudson and 
Vicksburg ; they marched with Sherman from 
Atlanta to the sea. Some laid down their lives 
in the battlefield and on ships of war, and there 
were others who were fated to languish and die in 
Southern prisons, and there were happily those 
whose privilege it was at the end to march with 
their comrades back to the Nation's capitol and to 
lay down their arms in peace before the President 
of a reunited country. 

The individual records made, notably by the com- 
panies recruited chiefly from the town and sent 
forth under the commands of Captains Caswell 
and Fay, were conspicuous for sobriety, good order, 
and efficiency. Sixty-nine of the ninety-four men 
constituting Captain Fay's company, " being desir- 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 7 

ous," as they recited upon starting from the State 
camp for active service in the field, " of returning to 
our homes at the expiration of nine months with 
characters as pure and unsullied as when we bid our 
friends adieu, now, therefore, do hereby pledge our- 
selves to abstain from the use of all intoxicating 
drinks as a beverage, during said period of nine 
months ; and, moreover, by our influence, both in 
word and deed, we pledge ourselves to discounte- 
nance everything which tends to profanity, vulgarity, 
or obscenity, and at all times to conduct ourselves 
as pure, high-minded men." ^ Certainly such men, 
in imitation of their Puritan ancestors, marched to 
war as Christian soldiers, to return when their ser- 
vice was over to do their duties as good citizens. 

But the tale is not all told in recounting the story 
of the men who marched to the field and served 
on the seas. The citizens sought to care for the 
families of those who had departed, the town voted 
large sums of money, and during the entire period 
the hands of the men and women and children were 
alike busy in public and private measures for the 
relief and comfort of the soldiers in camp, and for 
alleviating, as far as possible, the sufferings and 
miseries of war. 

Such has been the part taken by the inhabitants 
of the town in the more striking periods of its his- 
tory. In reclaiming the land from the wilderness 

1 Athol in Suppressing the Great Rebellion. 



i8 



A STORY OF 



and devoting it to the purpose of civilization, in 
asserting and maintaining the rights and liberties 
of the people when the mother country sought arbi- 
trarily to snatch them away, in defending the Nation 
and saving the Union which they had helped to 
build up, when foes from within sought to dissolve 
the Union and to destroy the Nation, this town 
bore well its part — and need not blush before any 
of its peers. 

The story upon which we have dwelt is largely of 
martial deeds and warlike measures, but peace has 
had her victories as well as war. It is the triumphs 
of peace which we see about us to-day, and the 
fruits of one hundred and sixty-eight years of peace- 
ful, patient strivings which are spread before us. 

In the original allotment of lands for the plant- 
ing of Paquoiag, out of the sixty-three house-lots 
to be laid out, there were first assigned " one for the 
first setded minister, one for the ministry, one for 
the school." 

On the twenty-ninth day of August, in the year 
1750, the First Church was formally established, 
and the members entered into a solemn covenant by 
which they declared their serious and hearty belief 
in the Christian religion, as contained in the Holy 
Scriptures, comprising the revealed will of God re- 
specting both what they were to believe and what 
they were to do, and obligated themselves to the 
duties of a good, sober, and religious life, and to 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 9 

walk in love with one another and in the fear of 
God. On the seventh of the following November, 
the Rev. James Humphreys, a graduate of Harvard 
College, having been invited by vote of the Pro- 
prietors of the Plantation, arrived from Dorchester 
on horseback, with sermons, wardrobe, and other 
earthly goods in saddle-bags, to be ordained as the 
first settled minister of the Plantation. Mr. Hum- 
phreys began his ministry to a community of hardly 
more than twenty families. The first log meeting 
house in the woods was soon burnt down, but the 
people immediately commenced to build a new one 
on the Street near the fort ; but " however prosper- 
ous in their building," says the early chronicler,^ 
" troubles yet await them, for when a part was in the 
sanctuary, a number was obliged to watch at the 
post of her doors to keep off their devouring enemy, 
whilst others were worshipping God within — for 
three successive years the Rev. Mr. Humphreys 
carried his gun into the meeting house in case of 
an alarm." His kindly ministry lasted a little more 
than thirty-one years, the people, says again the an- 
cient chronicle, "being in perfect friendship one 
with another and their minister." 

Mr. Humphreys was succeeded by the Rev. 
Joseph Estabrook, who, for forty-three years, was 
the devoted shepherd of a flock which embraced 
almost the whole community. 

Thus for eighty years there was substantially one 
1 Manuscript of James Humphreys, Esq. See also Appendix, p. 47. 



20 A STORY OF 

church and one parish, and the parish was one with 
the town. The town built and maintained the 
meeting house; it called and settled the minister, 
and fixed and paid his salary, and its vote was 
necessary for his dismissal. Until the year 1830, 
with few exceptions, the people all listened to a 
single preacher, and one covenant of belief sufhced 
for the members of the church.^ The people had 
lingered long in religious harmony after contro- 
versies in faith and dogma had begun to agitate the 
towns and congregations of New England. At 
that date came the agreement to disagree, and a 
portion of the people went forth from the old church 
to a separate gathering-place. The inhabitants, in 
accordance with the dictates of differing consciences, 
began to worship the same God of their fathers in 
sanctuaries built according to their several faiths.- 
And now, instead of one, several edifices, con- 
structed with the simplicity and beauty which 
characterize the better church architecture of New 
England, lift their spires heavenward. The as- 
perities which marked the first differences of belief 
have largely disappeared, and the various wor- 
shippers, sharing more and more in the harmony of 
the outward form which prevails in their church 
building, seek again, with the obligations of the 
ancient covenant, "to inculcate the duties of a good, 
sober and religious life, and to walk in love with 
one another in the fear of God." 

^ See Appendix, p. 46. 

2 Regarding the First Church fifty years ago, see p. 37. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 21 

The school began apace with the church. In 
the year following the incorporation of the town, in 
1763, thirteen pounds, six shillings, eight pence were 
appropriated to provide a school, and three years 
later it was voted to build two schoolhouses. Four 
years later four more schools were provided for. 

In the year 1783, the town voted to procure a 
grammar school master, and, in order that discipline 
mio-ht eo hand in hand with education, the com- 
mittee appointed for the purpose was likewise in- 
structed "to procure Stocks for the Town as the 
Law Directs." 

The beginnino^s thus made have been sustained 
with constantly increasing interest and liberality. 
The primitive log cabins, dependent upon a rude 
door and a single window for light, equipped with 
hardly more than logs split in halves for benches 
upon which the children might sit, were succeeded 
first by framed one-roomed and two-roomed build- 
ings, with few furnishings and appliances beyond 
the board seats and upright backs and the long 
wooden desks, which, often engraved with deeply 
whittled letters, served to transmit a memory of 
their successive occupants ; and now these, in turn, 
have given place to structures built in enduring 
brick, which, for utility and construction, com- 
pleteness of furnishing, and beauty of design and 
location, may safely compete with any in the 
Commonwealth. 

The first appropriations for the support of the 



2 2 A STORY OF 

schools have been doubled and trebled, and multi- 
plied again and again all through the dark and ex- 
haustive periods of war, and financial and industrial 
depression. The town has testified its constant 
devotion to the public schools. Under the article in 
the warrant for the last annual town meeting, in- 
stead of the thirteen pounds, six shillings, eight 
pence, in old currency, there was appropriated the 
amount of $22,500, furnishing a sum of almost $21 
to be expended for each enrolled pupil. 

But it is not alone the church and the school 
which have nurtured the inhabitants in knowledge 
and enlightened liberty of thought and action. The 
old school districts, first established as " squadarns " ^ 
to perform their part in the educational service of 
the town, collected their district libraries, made up 
of a score, or two score or more, it might be, of 
volumes of science, of natural and political history, 
of practical household knowledge, and often handed 
around for keeping from family to family. Not 
infrequently in winter evenings the community 
gathered in the little schoolhouse, bringing their 
candles in hand, to the spelling match or the sing- 
ing school, or oftener to the district lyceum. Here 
the boys arose, and in prepared declamation re- 
peated the wise and eloquent words of the sages 
and orators of the past, the girls read their well- 
penned compositions, and the elders engaged on 

^ Sec Appendix, p, 46. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 23 

chosen sides in long and earnest debates, now upon 
some selected question of general morals, and now 
upon some problem which agitated the State or 
the Nation, each side, affirmative and negative, 
strong with might and main to win the prize of the 
contest, — the final vote of the small audience for 
superiority in argument. The outer district at 
times called from the centre, or the village, the 
minister or the doctor or the lawyer to add weight 
to the debate, or to deliver a more formal lecture. 

The Sunday-school library furnished a weekly 
volume for home reading to each of its pupils, 
made up of books — as some of us here to-day can 
testify — well chosen for telling and teaching the 
living stories and loftier sentiments of the earlier 
authors, who were imbued with the duty of both 
elevating and instructing their readers. 

These more modest agencies were supplemented, 
beginning more than fifty years ago, by Library 
Associations which were oro^anized to make larofer 
collections and wider distributions of books. The 
earlier of these were officered entirely by the women 
of the town. 

The year 1882 marked the merging of the priv- 
ate association in a town institution, and the estab- 
lishment of the Public Library, the town voting to 
furnish a suitable place, appropriate money for 
maintenance, and to provide for the purchase of 
books, which now number more than six thousand 
volumes. 



24 A STORY OF 

When the Lyceum lecture came in vogue, the 
town organized its more formal lecture associations, 
and, from no inconsiderable funds subscribed for 
the purpose, invited men eminent within and with- 
out the Commonwealth to address the people upon 
subjects within their various departments of knowl- 
edge, and upon the living questions of the day. 

Some here may recall the appearance upon the 
platform, in ready response to the invitation of the 
" Pequoig Institute," of one about to become a rev- 
erend President of Harvard College, who, with 
blackboard and with chalk in hand, proceeded at 
more than an hour's length, by learned terms and 
drawn illustrations, to develop the functions of the 
parabola and its cognate curves ; but there were 
others, like Phillips and Whipple, and Holland and 
Starr King, and Emerson, who upon more vivid 
topics stirred youth and elders alike to a quicker 
intellectual life, by their words of wisdom and of 
eloquence. 

There has been added in later years the influ- 
ence of the press. On the twenty-eighth day of 
December, 1827, "Freedom's Sentinel" proclaimed 
aloud its purpose " to foster and disseminate in the 
minds of the rising generations those attachments 
to education, habits of industry and principles of 
virtue, upon which depend the transcendent bless- 
ings of our excellent political institutions," " to en- 
courage agricultural pursuits," " to reprobate in the 
strongest terms the injustice and horrors of slavery " 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 2$ 

with a view, by every discreet exertion, to secure 
"its complete abolition," to advance religion and 
morality as essential to good government and the 
happiness of mankind, and withal to sustain fear- 
lessly the national administration of John Quincy 
Adams, whose message to Congress it published in 
full, to the exclusion of " a great variety of news 
and miscellaneous matter." I should, however, add 
that Theodore Jones, James Humphreys, and Eli- 
phalet Thorpe, Morton and Hill, and Nickerson and 
Cheney found space to advertise their various wares 

and products. 

On the twenty-ninth day of December, m 1829, 
with undisguised repugnance, it published, in part, 
the first message of Martin Van Buren, and an- 
nounced the determination of its publisher " to take 
a friendly leave of his patrons, and depart in peace, 
good spirits and with empty pockets." 

After an interval of many years, in 1850, the 
"Sentinel" was succeeded by "The White Flag," 
an ensign " to promote the Christian Confidence of 
Neighb'^orhoods, Towns, States and Nations." Unfor- 
tunately this publication also proved premature, and 
it had a shorter term of life than its predecessor. 

The time had not seemed ripe for the permanent 
newspaper until the year 1866, when the publica- 
tion of the "Worcester West Chronicle" began, 
and it was followed five years later by the " Athol 
Transcript," and, in still later years, by ''The 
Healthy Home" and "Our Church Record." 



26 



A STORY OF 



These succeeding publications have all maintained 
the high standard raised by the early pioneer in jour- 
nalism, and have been conducted with constant 
devotion to the interests of the community. 

The levelling of the forests and the cultivation 
of the lands for food were necessarily the first occu- 
pations of the inhabitants, but it was not long be- 
fore the river and its branches on either side, 
dashing from fall to fall in their swifter courses, 
allured them by promises of assistance to other 
industrial activities. The saw mill and the o-Hst 
mill were naturally first erected, the town votino- 
an "encouragement" in land or money for their 
building; then came the fulling mill for the finish- 
ing of the fabrics which the hands of the women 
had spun and woven, and at an early date the 
scythe-shop. In the year 1793 it is chronicled of 
the industries of the town that there were "four 
grist mills, six saw mills, one fulling mill, and one 
trip hammer," and the writer added that he must 
not omit to mention that there was a very fine 
spring issuing out upon the side of Miller's River, 
the water whereof had the efHcacy and virtue with- 
out soap which others had with it, and were more- 
over so medicinal that some by washing the parts 
affected had been cured of poison, and others had 
found great relief when afflicted with rheumatic 
complaints.^ 

1 Whitney's History of Worcester County, p. 247. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 27 

Though the medicinal spring, it seems, has long 
ceased to flow, the mills, and the shops, and the 
factories have grown with steady increase in num- 
bers, and water and steam have united to assist the 
labor of hands and brains. 

Were it possible to enumerate here the products 
which the industrial establishments of to-day in the 
town are contributing to the markets and the needs 
of the country and of the world, the list would seem 
in variety a marvel for a community little exceed- 
ing seven thousand in number. The census of the 
year 1900 tells us in bare statistics that, in place of 
the saw and grist mills, the fulling mill, and the 
trip-hammer, enumerated a little more than a cen- 
tury before, there were one hundred and seventy- 
nine manufacturing establishments, having a capital 
of ^1,722,593, employing fourteen hundred and 
fifty-five wage-earners, who received an annual sum 
of $668,445, and the products of whose labors 
amounted to $2,549,704.* 

Though these statistics may suggest, they fail to 
tell the happier features of the industrial record of 
the town. It is most fortunate that its entire busi- 
ness is not concentrated in the few, but is shared 
by the many, and that its industries call, not for 
classes drilled and confined to routine labor, but 
for individual men and women of skill and intelli- 
gence. That community has advanced nearest the 
ideal New England town in which distinctions of 

* See Appendix, p. 47. 



28 A STORY OF 

power and wealth have failed to gain a foothold, 
where every man in his chosen field mingles and 
labors side by side with his fellow, where mansion 
and tenement stand not in frowning contrast, but 
houses and homes look each other brightly and 
cheerfully face to face; and, judged by such stand- 
ards, this town has attained an enviable place among 
the towns of the Commonwealth. 

Best of all the products of the town have been 
the men and the women who have from the found- 
ing of the plantation made up the list of its towns- 
people. The resolution and enterprise and the 
intelligent public spirit which inspired the first pro- 
prietors, have continued to animate their successors 
in all the following periods of its history, and it is 
remarkable how large a part the descendants of 
these proprietors, in name as well as in spirit, have 
borne in the events of the succeeding generations. 
The town and the church records, manuscripts and 
tradition, and the publications made from time to 
time, all bear witness to the individual devotion of 
its inhabitants to good principles of living and 
action. They sought to establish good homes and 
ennoble their domestic life and to advance by the 
means within their reach the general welfare of the 
community, and they were ever alert in thought 
and act to the broader interests of the State and 
the Nation. Difficult problems for the parish, the 
section, or the town sometimes came, upon which 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 29 

differences arose and sides were taken, and, as must 
occur when men of strong will and independent 
judgment differ, controversies were fought vigor- 
ously and at length ; but, the questions settled, the 
wounds have healed, the prejudices have disap- 
peared, and mutual respect has brought better 
understanding and a more enlightened harmony. 

The town owes largely, also, its present standing 
and prosperity to the character of the men whom 
it has selected for the direction of its affairs. The 
records of the town bear witness to the care and 
watchfulness with which its concerns, whether of 
trifling or of larger moment, have been guarded, and 
to the honesty and fidelity with which official trusts 
have been administered. 

The town has constituted a democracy whose 
members have well performed their several parts. 

I wish that I had the time and the power and 
the retrospective sight by which I might recall to 
your minds, in more distinct and vivid colors, the 
men and women whose labors and sacrifices have 
made Athol the cherished home which gathers us 
here to-day. 

Embodied by history or tradition, or by tender 
recollections of the past, they will reappear and walk 
with us in the places which knew them well, and 
mingle in the scenes where they took their worthy 
parts in other days. 

That revered minister who, for twoscore years 



30 A STORY OF 

and three, led the people in love and harmony, who 
with mingled wisdom and humor dispensed justice 
and mercy to his parishioners, who, in his Catho- 
licity, declaring himself only a " Bibletarian," held 
his people from the religious agitations which rent 
surrounding communities, will come back to his 
congregation, which was the whole town, bringing 
his message of peace and good-will. 

You will see again the forms of holy men who 
followed Mr. Estabrook in devoted Christian ser- 
vice, more familiar in aspect to your gaze. In 
the group will stand those two valiant soldiers of 
the cross, who, while fighting with different weap- 
ons for the same great cause, gave their time, their 
zeal, and their talents to the promotion of every 
public interest and the uprooting of every moral 
evil which rose in their paths. Such ministers 
as Mr. Clarke and Mr. Norton would long live in 
the thoughts of this people had they not made 
their memory enduring as earlier historians of the 
town. 

The country doctors will pursue their accus- 
tomed rounds, bringing relief and confidence to 
households in distress. First, in the dimness of the 
dawn, with features hardly to be traced, except by 
reflection from faces of descendants following in 
worthy and unbroken line, is Dr. Joseph Lord, 
physician, preacher, magistrate, town treasurer and 
clerk, surveyor and pioneer settler, combining all 
titles in one, and earliest in all. Next, Dr. Williams 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 3 1 

drives in gig with speedy pace, dispensing from out 
his store of drugs, with firm and liberal hand, pills 
and pellets strong, but coated with jest and pleas- 
antry. To milder treatment of baths and draughts, 
Dr. Hoyt invites his patients to the Water Cure, 
yet, himself ardent and bold, he espouses, with an 
interest beyond the care of patients, the cause of 
freedom and the slave. Dr. Colony, most youthful 
of the three, rides next with spacious carriage, full 
of chattering children, his neighbors' and his own, 
his assistants in visits welcomed alike by patients 
and attendants for their kindliness and cheer. 

Quick to join us on a day like this. Colonel 
Townsend, with head erect and stalwart stride, 
reviews the scene made martial by his presence; 
again, for the annual muster on the common, heads 
his battalions in proud parade; or, to instill the 
military spirit in youthful breasts, drills in the 
ancient tactics, with march and countermarch, up 
hill and down, his company of boys. As when 
nearly half a century ago he marshalled the proces- 
sion to dedicate anew the ancient burial ground, 
how gladly would he lead again the children of the 
old High School, uniformed, by his command, the 
boys in spencers dark, the girls in white dresses 
with black aprons, or, if they all preferred, in dresses 
black with aprons white. 

The " freeholders and other inhabitants " will 
again in town meeting assemble, in his Majesty's 
name, to consider some fresh encroachment upon 



32 A STORY OF 

the people's rights, and Captain Oliver will take 
his accustomed place as moderator in the old meet- 
ing house, strong in his convictions and bold and 
fearless, like his successors in each following period, 
to battle alike in field and forum, against wrong 
and oppression. 

The scene changes, and now the Town Hall 
summons the voters to the determination of ques- 
tions of local moment. Calvin Kelton takes his 
place as moderator. Each article of the warrant 
is challenged for debate, and, in quick succession, 
rushing to the fray, rise Captain Bassett and Lyman 
Hapgood and John Hill, each equipped with facts 
and figures on his side, each bold and strong in 
statement and skilful in reply, tenacious to the end, 
and only vanquished, if it be, after the yeas and 
nays are heard and reconsideration is denied. 

The town magistrates return, justices whose 
duties were made light for lack of quarrels and 
of criminals, — or was it tliat from kindly interest, 
allied with judgment and sagacious tact, they kept 
the peace without appeal to Court. Squire Thorpe, 
himself in industry a pioneer, walking with pon- 
derous step, surveys with wonder and perhaps with 
caustic speech the busy industries which followed 
the beginnings which his enterprise had helped to 
make. Squire Jones, the merchant with the magis- 
trate combined, with modest courtesy and courtly 
mien, from his well-filled stock made up of honesty, 
rare judgment, and philanthropic zeal, freely dis- 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 33 

tributes to town and church and people his gifts of 
public service and of private charity. 

And Laban Morse, at home a counsellor and 
friend to all distressed, again, as din of war is heard, 
speeds, a good Samaritan, to the battle-fields, and 
bears to wounded soldiers their neischbors' stock 
of oil and wine, with messages of cheer and 
comfort. 

In foremost rank to greet us, from Chestnut Hill 
will come that citizen beloved by all his neighbors, 
and John Kendall's neighbors, whom he loved 
better than himself, comprised the town. All un- 
conscious to himself, he stands a type of gentle 
manliness and tender faith, of truth and honor, — 
the good townsman whose presence is a constant 
benediction. 

Early in our thoughts as in our lives, comes back 
the teacher of our youth, in varying forms, whose 
face, which has a tender look, is ever radiant with 
learning's glow, and, though she sometimes sternly 
frowns, enforcing discipline with smarting hand, 
oftener she directs, with gentle justice, her kindly 
sway, winning the reward of gratitude and praise. 

Again, those noble women, in whom duty seemed 
an impulse not command, with features veiled go 
forth from home and family to households worn 
with care and suffering, to watch from dark to dawn 
o'er beds of sickness and disease, all unconscious 
that they are following in the footsteps which angel 
feet have trodden. 

3 



34 A STORY OF 

But most vivid and dear of all in their tender 
greetings will come the familiar faces of the 
mothers and the sisters who filled home with the 
best of its charms and its memories. They sought 
not titles nor honors, they held not office in town 
or State, but they held the highest places in our 
hearts and in our lives, and in our fondest recol- 
lections we turn back to them to-day with reverent 
love and gratitude. 

The figures of the past throng upon us, too many 
for me or for a single voice to mention, yet few will 
be forgotten in the memories which will be awakened 
by this occasion. 

I must forbear, yet there is one figure more which 
I would evoke from the past. It is a familiar form, 
erect, alert, and always dignified, familiar to our 
homes and offices and streets for more than half 
the span of the town's history, — the lawyer-squire, 
a lawyer who ever makes his clients friends and 
debtors to his learning and his wisdom, a magistrate 
who sweetens justice with well-judged mercy, a 
citizen foremost to answer every call to public or 
to private service ; to-day we hold both in grateful 
memory and in living presence, the honest, upright 
judge.^ 

I have tried to tell briefly the story of a New 
England town, the story, with some of its salient 

* Judge Charles Field, the presiding officer and President of the 
Old Home Week. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 35 

features and characteristics, of our home town. It 
is a story of private enterprise and of public spirit, 
of worthy deeds and large accomplishment. Our 
fathers wrought, and here is the record of their 
labors. It is an honorable record which they deliver 
up to their sons and their daughters. 

The past is secure, the present is to-day, the 
future alone is ours to shape. Its problems, though 
of a different nature, are as difficult and as moment- 
ous as in the past, and for their solution they require 
men and women as strong-hearted, as vigilant, as 
public-spirited, as those of the early days. Shall 
the sons and daughters of this town be true to the 
principles and examples of their fathers ? 

Shall they protect the home from personal vices 
which follow greater ease and comfort, enforce the 
reverence and respect which youth should yield to 
age and station, promote affection undisguised which 
blesses both the giver and the taker, inspire the 
consciousness that homely purity and truth are 
precious far beyond the worth of gold and gain, that 
personal honor and faith in good lead on to true 
success, that " man 's a man " for what he is, not 
what he hath? 

Shall they not in business life demand, if combina- 
tions of capital and interests must still hold sway, 
that these shall neither seek nor dare to crush out 
private enterprise and thrift, that employer and 
employed alike shall practise and enforce the golden 
rule in mutual respect, that corporate bodies shall 



36 A STORY OF 

have yet a soul, and they who have direction of 
affairs shall feel that duty and responsibility become 
more personal and binding as size and power 
increase ? 

Shall they not hold fast and strong a public spirit 
in the town? Shall not their voice, when public 
interests are threatened or at stake, directed as of 
old by judgment and debate, proclaim aloud their 
protest or approval ? Shall they not demand that 
character and merit be the call to public service, 
and public ofHce still remain a public trust, that 
justice no distinction know between the rich and 
poor, and race and race, that law and order rule and 
never yield to passion and to frenzy, that education 
and religion shall have advancement and dominion, 
that faith and charity abound, and that the early 
covenant shall still bind the people of the town " to 
walk in love with one another and in the fear of 
God"? 

So stands the record of the town to-day. When, 
in coming years, the added pages shall be scanned 
and read, may they impart the gratitude and pride 
the story of to-day affords. 

If ten righteous men can save a city, a town like 
ours, of men and women all imbued with private 
virtue and with public zeal, may elevate — and even 
save, if need should come — a State or Nation. 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 37 



THE FIRST CHURCH. 

The following extracts relative to the First Church 
as it existed fifty years ago, are from a letter written 
on the occasion of the celebration of its one hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary, on September 1 1, 1900: — 

" The most cherished recollections of youth and 
the best associations of life cluster around the old 
New England First Church. It stood as the centre 
of right thinking and good works in the commu- 
nity. It offered a pure and simple and sincere wor- 
ship. Its pulpit not only discoursed of holier 
things, but the minister was the public teacher who 
gave the people much that was best in ancient and 
modern books and thought. Moral questions took 
on a zealous and often an eloquent interest, and the 
philanthropies and charities were urged from the 
desk, and found a ready and practical response from 
the pews. The Sunday-school library was town 
and private library for young and old alike. The 
noontime gatherings and lunches between services, 
supplemented by the weekly sewing circles, pro- 
moted good-will and friendliness, and filled a social 
need for the more distant dwellers, while from the 
homely horse-sheds there often emanated a public 
opinion and influence which were both beneficent 
and effective in neighborhood and town affairs, — 
and all helped to impress upon the community a 
spirit of true democracy. The First Church was as 



38 A STORY OF 

potent in building up the New England town, as 
the New England town has contributed what is 
best in good government to the State and the 
Nation. 

" Ours was a typical First Church a half-century 
ago. Its members had received by inheritance and 
tradition the sturdy God-fearing qualities which 
actuated its founders an hundred years before. 
The man-loving, peace-giving spirit of its first 
pastor still breathed upon them. No longer de- 
pendent upon tithes and taxes for its maintenance, 
the church was supported by the zeal and sacrifices 
of its members. The mothers who sat in their 
familiar, accustomed places in the old pews were 
women holy and devoted, the fathers were men good 
and true. We can recognize them as they entered 
on either side in full face of the gathering congrega- 
tion, — a kind of ordeal before which each laid bare 
his strength and his weaknesses. There were the 
Joneses, the Morses, and the Richardsons, the Hap- 
goods, the Olivers, and the Grays on the one side, 
and on the other aisle, if I mistake not, the Ken- 
dalls, the Lords, the Fays, the Fields, and the Mor- 
tons — and the others whose familiar names you 
will call to mind, names several of which were 
transmitted by the founders. There was the choir, 
with Mr. Wiggins its leader, to which we respect- 
fully arose and turned and paid our regards, and the 
wonderful organ which had lately come to supplant 
the violin and the great bass viol. Young and 



A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 39 

active, in the pulpit was the minister, Mr. Clarke, 
who added to scholarly diction and literary knowl- 
edge, a zeal and fearlessness worthy the Puritan set- 
tler; and who had as a helpmate a saintly wife, 
whose purity and sweetness will never be effaced 
from the remembrance of the children to whom she 
was ever tenderly devoted. The indebtedness of 
the town, for they included the whole town in their 
larger parish, to Mr. and Mrs. Clarke for their faith- 
ful and disinterested labors can hardly be forgotten 
and unfelt as long as the old church stands." 



APPENDIX. 



Note 1. Page 3. The Records of the General Court, Vol. 15, 
page 379, contain the following Act relating to the allotment of lands 
in Paquoiag : — 

" In Council, Friday, April 20, 1733. 
*' The following vote passed both Houses in July last, viz : — 
" In answer to that part of His Excellency's Speech which relates 
to the ungranted Lands of the Province. — Upon Consideration y« 
Power Is given the General Assembly to grant Lands especially for 
the Planting or Settling of the province & that by the Great Increase 
of His Majesty's good Subjects, many that are inclined to Industry 
have not been able to obtain Lands for the Employm' of themselves, 
& Families, & great numbers have removed to Neighbouring Colo- 
nies for their accommodation. — Voted that there be four Towns 
opened of the Contents of Six Miles square Each viz. One at Paquoiag 
on Miller's River, Two on Ashueoelot River above Northfield, the other 
in the Eastern Country at the Head of Berwick, all to be surveyed in 
October or November next at furthest by the Direction of Comm'^^^ to 
be appointed by the General Court & their several Surveys to be 
Reported at the Fall Session & the Charge of the Comm'.'=« & Sur- 
vey to be paid out of the public Treasury y' Comm'."^'^^ be appointed 
to admit Settler^ & to lay out the House Lots so that y"= Set- 
tlern'^ may be made in a Defensible manner, & to direct in the 
drawing thereof, but not to lay out any other Divisions without further 
Directions from this Court. Each Home Lot to consist of so many 
Acres as the Court shall Order. After Report is made of the Quality 
& other Circumstances of the Land, the Comm*.'='=5 to be paid as the 
Court shall Order, that there be sixty three House Lots laid out in 
Each Township, One for the first Settled Minister, One for the Min- 
istry, one for the School & one for Each of the Sixty Settlers who 
shall settle thereon in his own person or by one of his Children. 
The rest of the Land to be allotted or Divided equally into Sixty 
three Parts ; That one Year be allowed from the Survey for the Ad- 
mission of Settlers, And that the Comm'5'^ be directed to Demand & 
receive from Each Settler at his admission Five pounds part of 



42 



APPENDIX. 



which shall be employed for reimbursing the Province the Money 
to be advanced for paying the Committee & the Charge of the Survey, 
the remaining part to be employed for building Houses for publick 
Worship or otherwise as the General Court shall Order. That 
Each Settler actually live on his Land within three years from his 
Admission, build an House on his Land of eighteen feet square & 
Seven feet stud at the least, & within the same Time do suffi- 
ciently fence in & till or fit for mowing Eight Acres of Land, Each 
Settler to have his Land on Condition that he perform the foregoing 
injunctions & in Case any Settler fail of performance in the whole 
or in part, his Right to be forfeited & such Land shall revert to 
the province & the Comm\«« to be appointed to Admit Settlers are 
directed at the Time of Admission to take a Bond of Twenty pounds 
of each Settler to be paid to them or their Successors for the Use 
and Benefit of the Settlers in Case he fail of performing the several 
Conditions & Injunctions before mentioned & that the Settlers in 
each Town to be obliged to build a suitable meeting house & to 
settle a learned orthodox Minister in such Town within the space of 
five years from the Admission of the Settlers. 

" Consented to J. Belcher." 

The following entry was made in the Proprietors Book of 
Records : — 

" The following is a List of the Names of the Men admitted by 
the Hon^il William Dudley, Chair Man of the Com", & others, the 
Great & General Courts Committee, to draw House Lotts in the 
Township of Pequoiag on Millars River, on the 26 of June 1734 at 
Concord, as Sellers of said Pequoiag : — 



8 

M 


> 
55 
East, 


S5K : 
East- 


o2 
-13 


I'l 


V 

w 
East 


.2 5- 
East 


o3 

u 

n 


Edward Goddard 


John Wood 


I. 


Daniel Epps. Junt f 


East 


West- 


-11 


Benjamin Townsend 


West 


East 


10. 


Daniel Epps Son. 


East 


East- 


- 9 


Jonathan Morton — 


West 


West 


3. 


Ebenezer Goddard 


East 


West- 


- 4 


Joseph Smith 


East 


East 


6. 


Zechariah Field | 


East 


West- 


-18 


William Oliver 


East 


East 


10. 


Nehemiah Wright 


West 


West 


7 


Moses Dickinson. 


West 


East 


9- 


Richard Wheeler — 


West 


West 


12 


Joshua Dickinson. 


West 


East 


«3- 


Richard Morton 


East 


West- 


- 9 


James Kellogg 


West 


East 


7- 


Samuel Morton — 


West 


West 


I 


Richard Crouch 


East 


West 


12. 


Ephraim Smith 


West 


West 


3 


Ezekiel Wallingford 


West 


West 


10. 


Nathan Waite — 


East 


West 


'5 


James Jones 


West 


East 


4. 


Charles Duharthy. 


West 


West 


13 


John Grout 


West, 


East 


13. 


Gad Waite 


West 


East 


3 


Daniel Adams 


West 


West 


s- 


Joseph Lord 


East 


East 


3 


John Cutting 


East 


West 


»7- 


Benoni Twichel 


East 


West 


10 


Samuel Kendall 


West, 


East 


6. 


John WaUis 


East 


East 


7 


Ditto 


East, 


East 


3< 





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APPENDIX. 



43 



Is 



Samuel Willard 

John Smeed 

William Chandler 
Jonathan Marble 
William Higgens — 
James Kenney 

Abner Lee 

Abraham Nutt 

John Headly 

Isaac Fisk 

Daniel Fisk 

Thomas Hapgood 

Richard Ward 

Samuel Tenney 



East 
West 
East 
West 
East 
West 
East 
West 
East 
East 
West 
East 
West 
West 



West 7 
East s 
West 6, 
West II 
East 8 
West 9 
West 
East 
West 
East 
East I 
West i6 
West 6. 
East 



l°S 



Jonathan Page 

John Longley 

Joseph Brown 

John Child 

Nathaniel Graves 
George Danforth — 

James Fay j 

Capt. Joseph Bowman 
Francis Bowman — 

Stephen Fay 

Israel Hamond 

Benjamin Bancroft. 
Joseph Harrington 
James Holden 



East 
East 
East 
East 
East 
West 
West 
West 
East 
West 
West 
West 
East 
West 



West 14. 

East 4. 

West s. 

East It. 

East 12. 

East.. 14. 

West S. 

West 4. 

West 13. 

East 16. 

East 15. 

West 14. 

West 3. 

East II. 



N, B. I transcribe! the above from a List under the Hand of Joseph 
Lord who made oath to the Truth of it, & adds the following 

N. B. Viz. " This above mentioned List is what the Clerk of 
" Pequoiag has always made use of for Want of an attested Copy; 
"and also entred in their Book of Records without Attest — 

The above entred p"^ A. Hill, Prop'^ Clerk Aug^' 24, 1761 ~n.^ 

Note 1. Page 4. The five proprietors who became the first settlers 
in the plantation of Paquoiag, were, according to Rev. Mr. Clarke in 
his Centennial Discourse dehvered before the First Church and 
Society in 1850, Richard Morton, Ephraim Smith, Samuel Morton, 
John Smeed and Joseph Lord. Mr. Clarke, quoting the MS. of 
James Humphreys, says they came from Hatfield. 

Note 1. Page 5. The following is the Act of the General Court 
incorporating the town of Athol : — 

AN ACT FOR ERECTING THE NEW PLANTATION CALLED PAYQUAGE, 
IN THE COUNTY OF WORCESTER, INTO A TOWN BY THE NAME 
OF ATHOL. 

Whereas it hath been represented to this Court that the inhabi- 
tants of the plantation of Payquage, in the county of Worcester, 
labour under great difficulties, by reason of their not being incor- 
porated into a town, and are desirous of being so incorporated, — 

Be it therefore enacted by the Governor, Council and House of 
Representatives, 

Sect. i. That the said plantation be and hereby is erected into a 
town by the name of Athol, bounded as follows : viz., northerly, on the 
plantations of Royalshire and Mountgrace; westerly, on Ervingshire 
and New Salem ; southerly, on Petersham and the plantation called 
Number Six; and easterly, on said Number Six; and that the in- 



44 APPENDIX. 

habitants thereof be and hereby are invested with all the powers, 

privileges and immunities that the inhabitants of the towns within this 
province are, by law, vested with. 

And be it further enacted, 

Sect. 2. That John Murray, Esquire, be and hereby is directed 
and empowered to issue his warrant, directed to some of the principal 
inhabitants within said town, requiring them to warn the inhabitants 
of said town, qualified to vote in town affairs, to assemble at some 
suitable time and place in said town, to chuse such officers as are 
necessary to manage the affairs of said town. 

Provided, nevertheless, — 

Sect. 3. The inhabitants of said town shall pay their proportion- 
able part of such county and province charges as are already as- 
sessed in like manner as tho this act had not been made. (Passed 
March 6, 1762.) 

Province Laws, 1 761-2. Chap. 46. 

Note 2. Page 5. Col. John Murray of Rutland, Mass., who gave 
the town of Athol its name, was the youngest son of the Duke of 
Athol in Scotland. Mr. Caswell, in his "Athol, Past and Present," 
says that Colonel Murray in 1776 accompanied the royal army to 
Hahfax, and that later his lands were confiscated. 

Note 1. Page 9. The following are in full the resolutions passed 
by the town on August 25, 1774: — 

On the 25th of August, 1774, "at a meeting of the freeholders 
and other inhabitants of the town duly assembled and convened, the 
following resolves were unanimously passed, viz.: — 

" 1st. Resolved, That it is the incumbent duty of every inhabi- 
tant of these British colonies, and more especially of this distressed 
province, to unite together in one firm bond of union, and to exert 
themselves to the uttermost of their power in all lawful and prudent 
measures to maintain, defend, and secure to ourselves and posterity all 
those rights and privileges which we are justly entitled to as men and 
Christians, and as subjects of a free government. 

" 2dly. Resolved, That we acknowledge ourselves loyal and dutiful 
subjects to King George the Third, whose Crown and Dignity we ever 
stand ready to maintain and defend so long as he shall rule and govern 
agreeable to the English constitution and our chartered rights. But, 
that the authority of late claimed by the British Parliament, to make 
laws binding on the colonies in all cases whatever, is unconstitutional 
and subversive of our natural and chartered rights, oppressive to 
America, and in no way beneficial to the mother country. 



APPENDIX. 



45 



" 3dly. Resolved, That the late Act of the British Parliament, for 
blocking up the port or harbor of Boston, by which the town is sur- 
rounded by fleets and armies, exposed to the abuses and insults of a 
lawless soldiery, and by which the means of their subsistence is 
almost entirely wrenched out of their hands, is very unjust and cruel, 
contrary to all equity and reason, and injurious and oppressive to this 
Province. 

" 4thly. Resolved, That the two late Bills of the British Parliament, 
by which our charter rights are entirely taken away, and the free con- 
stitution of this government utterly annihilated and destroyed, and by 
which, (if submitted to,) we shall soon be reduced to the most abject 
slavery and bondage, are a violation of the sacred compact between 
Great Britain and this Province; and such a breach of the natural 
rights and privileges of mankind, and so repugnant to the mutual obli- 
gations we are all by the law of nature under towards one another, that 
no person (unless they are lost to all the tender feelings of humanity) 
but must reject with abhorrence the thought of thus tyrannizing over 
their fellow creatures. 

" Sthly. Resolved, That we stand ready to join our feeble efforts in 
conjunction with the rest of our brethren in these colonies, or of this 
Province, to prevent the above-mentioned acts from taking place, and 
also to assist, to the utmost of our power, in the most prudent and 
likely measures that may be adopted, to recover and secure our lost 
liberties and privileges ; and if it be not too much boldness and pre- 
sumption for so small a town to mention any particular plan, we are 
humbly of the opinion that it would have a happy tendency to work 
our deliverance, if the Province should reassume the first charter that 
was given them, and, at the same time, let the mother country know 
that we not only remain willing, but even desirous, to continue loyal 
and dutiful subjects to King George, consistent with the liberties and 
privileges granted in said charter. 

" 6thly. Resolved, That, as committees from the several towns in this 
county have lately had a meeting at Worcester, which stands adjourned 
to the last Tuesday in this month, for the purpose of consulting to- 
gether and agreeing on some measure for this county to take to prevent 
our courts from being held on, or modelled according to the new Estab- 
lishment, we hereby signify our approbation of the same, and that we 
stand ready to join in such measures as shall be thought most likely to 
effect the above purpose ; and as the committee of correspondence for 
this town have sent one of their members to attend the above mentioned 
D&eeting, we fully concur with, and approve of, their conduct in so 
doing, and that William Bigelow and Daniel Lamson be and are hereby 
appointed to attend the adjournment of said meeting. 



46 APPENDIX. 

" 7thly. Resolved, That if any person shall accept any commission 
or post of office to serve under the new Establishment, he ought to be 
looked upon and treated as an enemy to his country ; as he, thereby, 
is joining with, and lending a helping hand to those who are endeavor- 
ing to enslave us. 

" The foregoing Resolves being distinctly read paragraph by para- 
graph in an open town meeting convened in Athol, August 25, A. D. 
1774, were unanimously accepted and ordered to be recorded. 

" Pr. \Vm. Bigelow, Town Clerk. Aaron Smith, Moderator." 

Note 2. Page 9. The Committees on Correspondence for Wor- 
cester County assembled on August 9, 1774, and the county resolutions 
were adopted on August 10. The resolutions of the town were more 
definite and aggressive than those of the county, but the town held 
a special meeting on September 2, and accepted the report of the 
convention, and ordered these resolutions also to be placed on its 
records. 

The Suffolk County resolutions were adopted on September 6, 1774. 
Berkshire County had held its convention before the date of the 
convention for Worcester County, on July 6, but its resolutions were 
of a milder type. 

Note 1. Page 20. There seem to have been some families of the 
Baptist denomination among the early settlers, and from time to time 
individuals were relieved from taxation for the church upon certificates 
of their belief and affiliation with that denomination. Religious wor- 
ship was maintained by them in connection with others of that church, 
in Royalston and in Templeton, and a year or two preceding the year 
1830 a house of worship was erected in Athol by the Baptists. 

Note 1. Page 22. The following is from the Town Records : — 
"At a Town meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of 
the Town of Athol in the County of Worcester duly Qualifyed and 
regularly assembled according to Law held at the meeting house on 
the 18'.'' day of May A. D. 1774 : past the following Vots viz. ... — 
"Art 6 Voted that West Hill and all west of Tulley east branch 
be a Squadarn for a School. . . . and under Art 6 Voted that Ches- 
nut Hill So Called and all east of the east branch of Tulley North of 
the River be a Squadarn for a School. . . . Under Art 6 Voted that Four 
Squadarns for Schools be made on the South Side of the river, and 
Voted to Choose a Committee to make the boundaries of the afore Sd 
Four Squadarns South of the River . . . and Chose John Oliver 
Ephraim Stockwill and Wil"' Ward for S? Committee Who are to 
make return to the Town at the next meeting of Their doings thereon. 



APPENDIX. 



47 



... art 9. Voted that the pew Spots in the meeting house be estab- 
lished to the men that drawed them and to their Heirs forever. ..." 

Note 1. Page 27. Barber, in his Historical Collections, published 
in 1S39, pp. 552-553, gives the following statistics regarding the 
town : — 

" The village at this place consists of about fifty dwelling-houses, 
four mercantile stores, and a number of mechanic shops. ... In this 
town are a cotton factory, paper-mill, a large scythe establishment, 
cupola furnace, door and sash factory, large cabinet works, turning 
mills, etc. There are six churches, — two Congregational, two Meth- 
odist, one Baptist, and one Universalist. Population, 1,603. I" 1S37, 
there was one cotton mill, 1,024 spindles; cotton goods manufactured, 
316,100 yards ; hands employed, ten males, forty-five females. Boots 
manufactured, 16,312 pairs; shoes, 38,333 pairs; value of boots and 
shoes, ^558,741 ; males employed, seventy-nine ; females, thirty-seven." 

Note 1. Page 19. Rev. Mr. Clarke in his Centennial Discourse 
makes frequent references to the manuscript of James Humphreys, 
which he had at the time in his possession, and which he refers to as 
" ' Memorandum of the First Settlers, . . . taken from the best au- 
thority that can be obtained from the oldest inhabitants ' by James 
Humphrey, Esq., son of the first minister of the town." Mr. Clarke 
says that I\Ir. Humphreys states in the manuscript that he was per- 
sonally and familiarly acquainted with some of the earlier settlers 
and derived his information from them. 

This manuscript was long in the possession of the James Hum- 
phreys family, and great effort has now been made to find it. James 
Humphreys, the fifth of the name from the first minister, who now 
resides in Dedham, Massachusetts, has discovered among the family 
effects what appears to be a portion of this manuscript but the re- 
mainder has not been found. 

The portion of the manuscript discovered runs as follows : 

The Rev"^ M^ Humphreys, after a few Inhabitants had settled in 
Perquague, gave him an invitation to settle in the gospel Ministry — 
altho, few in number — yet their duty, to support the gospel, was the 
first great object, of the settlers — considering the preaching gospel 
to be one of the most important objects, especially for a new settled 
place. 

Altho almost, every imbarisment presented it self to view, at the 
same time (viz) the few inhabitants surrounded by a barbarious Foe 
— beleaving that every posible exertions — to increase their Popala- 
tion for their arm of safety — gave Mr. Humphreys a call, and for 



48 APPENDIX. 

his support, gave fiftytwo pounds a year — which sum he accepted 
altho he knew the Annuity was insufficient 

Yet the friendship amoung the people one towards another — was 
without a parallal — he was Ordaind the seventeenth of Nov' 1750 — 

the Inhiburrtance built them a small AI. House — sufficient for the 
People, not far from Millers River — not yet assertaining whare the 
center of the Town would be — but by setting the Woods afire — it 
caught the M. House and was burnt down — which was a very heavy 
burden to the people — yet, still, being desirous to continue their 
religous priviledges — they immidiately comment building a New M. 
House on the street so called within about twenty rods from the fort 

— which was made comfortabe in a short time — for assemble in for 
the purpose intended — 

but however prosperous — in their building troubles yet awaited 
them — for when a part was in the sanctiary — a number was oblige 
to watch at the post of her doors, with their arms by their side — to 
keep of their devouring Enamy — whilst others ware worshiping God 
within — for three successive years the Rev? Mr- Humphre3-s car- 
ried his Gun into the meeting House — in case of an Alarm — 

Yet all these dificulties did not dishearten them — and being in 
perfect friendship one with another — and their Minister — they con- 
tinued, in cultivating the soil and making every improovment neces- 
sary for the rising Generation — the second M. House was too small 
for the Inhabitants — and was dispos'* of — And the third, and last, 
is the one we now assemble in — 

the Rev^ Mr. Humphreys was disms'. from the people in Feby. 
1782 after serving them in the Ministry for more than thirty one 
years — 

A Young Man by the Name of Aron-Hager — from N Salem — 
while at worke for James Humphreys — was imployed in taking down 
an old building — the timber suddenly gave way, and fell upon his 
head — by which wound he died the fourth day — 

the most shocking to relate — to close this narrative — of sudden 
death — was a Respectable midling aged Man — committed Suicide 

— his name is familier I presume — to all — who recollects the cir- 
cumstance — Joni Crosby 



PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE 
HISTORY OF ATHOL. 

History of Worcester County, by Peter Whitney, 1793; 
Athol. 

Historical Collections of Towns in Massachusetts, by 
John Warner Barber, 1848 ; Athol. Published by Warren Lazell, 
Worcester. 

Centennial Discourse of Rev. Samuel F. Clarke, Sept. 
9, 1850, before First Church and Society in Athol, with Appendix. 
Published by Crosby and Nichols, Boston. 

The Home of the Ancient Dead Restored. Address 
of Rev. John F. Norton on July 4, 1859, at Reconsecration of 
the Ancient Cemetery, with report of Proceedings. Published by 
Rufus Putnam, Athol. 

Athol in Suppressing the Great Rebellion. Record by 
a Committee of the Town, Rev. J. F. Norton, Chairman ; 1866. 
Published by Rand and Avery, Boston. 

History of Worcester County ; Athol, by George W. 
Horr ; 1879. Published by C. F. Jewett and Company, Boston. 

Semi-Centennial Address of Rev. Henry A. Blake, 

before the Evangelical Congregational Church, 1880. 

History of Worcester County ; Athol, by Rev. John F. 
Norton, 1889. Published by J. W. Lewis & Co., Philadelphia. 

Athol, Past and Present, by Lilley B. Caswell, 1899. 
Published by author, Athol. 



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